1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to visual display of information on an electronic medium, and more specifically to enabling a user to view external data source information in the form of a visual hierarchy and manipulate the data in an electronic workspace.
2. Description of the Background Art
Depicting information often makes it easier to understand and process the information. One known way to illustrate data is through visual hierarchies that graphically illustrate relationships between data items. An example of a visual hierarchy is a “mind map,” which is generally organized in a radial hierarchical fashion, with subnodes extending from a parent node. FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a mind map.
There are known computer programs that provide users with a workspace in which they can create visual hierarchies and manipulate such hierarchies. Such programs are often used as tools to facilitate discussions in that information can be easily grasped and manipulated in such an environment. In such known programs, data is manually entered into the visual hierarchy in the workspace. This can be time consuming and can duplicate data entry when the data is already stored in another data source. Therefore, it is desirable to be able to automatically import and display data from a data source into the workspace in the form of a visual hierarchy. It is also desirable to enable a user to modify, add to, or delete the data source information in the workspace and to enable the user to determine whether or not such changes are reflected in the data source itself.